Starting this week, every weekend, we’ll be choosing two of the most beautiful stories published on Goodmorning Runlovers, the newsletter edited by Andrea Corradin that you can read in less than a minute. It arrives in your inbox mailbox every day from Monday to Friday, by 8:30. If you are not registered, just click on this link or on the banner above.
These are two stories, geographically and humanly distant. Yet they have something in common that made us think they were great together. They are those of a person you have probably never heard of, and that of another you most likely know. Both are searching for something, both are on a journey.
It doesn’t matter where you come from
It doesn’t matter where you come from. Who you were in your previous life. What problems you had. It only matters what you choose to do today to overcome them.
The tip of Cape Angela in the north of Tunisiais the northernmost point of the African continent.
On April 7, 2023, among the European tourists intent on enjoying a nice strawberry daiquiri, a young man is seen running along the seafront. He has a long red beard. He appears tired but smiling.
He passes a red ribbon that simulates a finish line. Then his friends hug him in celebration.
He is Russell Cookand 27-year-old English ultra runner, with a history of alcoholism and gambling problems.
To face his demons one day, after hitting rock bottom for the umpteenth time, he decided to change everything. By testing himself in extreme sports endeavors.
Like the one that ended in April on the Tunisian coast. It crossed all of Africa in a hurry. From South Africa to Tunisia.
349 days. 16,294 km. 19.1 million steps. 16 countries. In between: mountains and deserts, a robbery in Angola, a hospital stay in Nigeria, diplomatic problems in Mauritania.
But he did it, he became a legend.
In addition to inspiring thousands of people, he has collected £790,000 destined for two charities: Running Charitywhich aims to help homeless youth, and Sandblast, which runs educational programs in refugee camps in Algeria.
For some, a madman. For others, an example of tenacity and altruism.
You choose.
It took me several years of hitting rock bottom to start thinking: the only way out is to take full responsibility for the situation I’m in. I have to try to improve myself and bring positive energy out there into the world, by committing myself, working on myself, and then slowly but surely climbing up.
Behind every person there is a story
The month of December is usually characterized by preparations for Christmas. Not for Dennisor at least not that year, 1966.
His father Philander, a former member of the US Air Force, decided to abandon the family and move to the Philippines to build a new life. That event certainly characterizes the childhood that the boy spends in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Dallas, with his mother and two sisters. He is a shy and introverted boy. Unlike his sisters, he does not excel in sports. He struggles to feel accepted.
After finishing school he starts working at the airport. But he is arrested for stealing some watches: he wanted to impress his classmates. He is fired and his mother kicks him out of the house. He becomes a homeless. He sleeps at friends’ houses or in city parks. He spends complex years, which will mark him.
But then he grows 23 centimeters in a year. His height no longer lets him go unnoticed. Dennis Rodman He is noticed in his little games at the basketball court. They offer him a scholarship to a remote college in Oklahoma. That is the turning point that will lead him to appear in the NBA, selected by the Detroit Pistons.
In Detroit he finds a father, coach Chuck Daly. With him in 1989 he wins his first championship. He wins again the following year.
It seems like the classic story of the boy who redeems himself. Who he is tenderly moved when receiving an award.
Then in 1992 he collapses in a personal and sporting crisis. He divorces. He abandons his newborn daughter. He leaves the Pistons. On February 11, 1993 he is found asleep in a parking lot with a rifle pointed at his head. Demons and ghosts, pain and anger.
But that night the boy from Dallas begins a second life. Maybe not the one you would imagine.
Reinvent your image: a rebellious look, tattoos, piercings, colored hair. Become a rock star. Controversial. Eclectic. Transgressive. At times brilliant. He has a relationship with Madonna. Quick marriages. Nights spent in Las Vegas casinos. Strong on the pitch, but off the court pure madness.
Dennis Rodman in one of his looks. Photo: ATHLETA MAGOn the way to the sunset, during yet another self-destructive phase, he ends up at the Chicago Bulls Michael Jordan e coach Phil Jacksonof which he becomes a faithful soldier. On the court he returns invincible: he wins 3 NBA titles in a row.
After the end of his sporting career he will remain a media personality, always ready to make people talk about him. The memory of that reserved young athlete is far away.
A man still struggling with his demons today.
In 2012, invited on stage to celebrate the inclusion in the Basketball Hall of Famemoved the audience.
Unable to hold his emotion, he showed himself in all his difficulties, laying himself bare and rewinding the tape of his life.
If someone asks me if I have any regrets in my basketball career, I say I have only one regret: I wish I could have been a better father.
But behind every person there is a story, often hidden.